Java in Practice: Design Styles and Idioms for Effective Java.

The authors have taken a novel approach by slowly introducing the forces that result in strong idioms in Java code, what one reviewer called "itertively developing examples". Starting from simple code examples they introduce the forces resulting in well founded Idioms. This gives their code examples the benefit of apparent simplicity whilst introducing some very deep and testing problems that Java developers will undoubtedly come across in their day to day work.

By slowly adding the forces acting on a particular problem and showing how these change the example code, they walk the reader down the path of a complex argument in a simple and easy to understand way. Resulting in pattern rich code that is of professional quality whilst retaining a simple form and being highly readable. This results in a much more interesting and fulfilling learning experience than that presented by the patterns reference works, or the myriad of basic Java Language books.